


Grazie

by teukie



Category: Super Junior
Genre: Break Up, Fake Marriage, M/M, One Shot, Writer!Donghae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:53:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29372643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teukie/pseuds/teukie
Summary: Donghae’s quest to experience romantic love doesn’t go as planned. He documents his feelings about the journey and doesn’t look back. | @ teukie
Relationships: Lee Donghae/Lee Hyukjae | Eunhyuk, Lee Hyukjae | Eunhyuk/Lee Sungmin
Kudos: 6





	Grazie

> I want to write a novel. You would already know this, as I’ve told you what feels like a thousand times, but what if added onto it by admitting to using you? I’ve told you that I have never been in love with somebody, that I struggle to make connections with other people and that meeting you was like a miracle in my life, but now you would know that I was only using you to try and gain the experience points. When I went to Italy, all my time was consumed by the thought of you. I feel like I didn’t get to appreciate the culture and my surroundings as much because my mind was focused on you. Of course, I still had my notebook handy, still writing in such little details, but because of you, I look back and feel that I didn’t take note of as much as I could have.

Lee Hyukjae, as I sit in what was once our bedroom, I think about these things and wonder if I’m just a fool behind the mask I’ve presented to you. I would like to take this opportunity to say that I am sorry, and also tell you that I did, even if it was just for a second, think that what we had could be called ‘love’. I would now like to go over what I’ve been using you for. I won’t keep the information in this document, but I feel like it will stay in the back of my mind until I can move on and find happiness with someone else. 

  
  


It was the summer of 2019, I was in Italy and you first started messaging me. At the start, I couldn’t tell that you were flirting but I eventually caught on. I had never been in a relationship before, so by the time I realised, I started flirting back. Many would say that it’s weird to ‘date’ someone through Instagram, but I didn’t consider us dating until I met you in person. Your profile seemed so bland to me while mine was filled with the pictures I took of Italian sights. I hadn’t really used it before the trip, but Instagram tends to have accounts with few posts and many followers, so I didn’t question how you found me. You sent me one post I made with myself in it and said you remembered me from somewhere. I didn’t remember until I saw you in person, but it was unimportant to me. What was important to me was that you ended up asking me about Italy and I rambled on about the gorgeous country, language and culture. What made me interested in you was that you seemed to be ‘listening’— as far the internet goes— but you were constantly typing like you wanted to add to the conversation and your status didn’t go offline once. Typing this out, it feels so pathetic, but by that point, I was like a fish on hook. 

It was early into my trip when it started. A little too early to be thinking there was boyfriend potential waiting for me back home. But of course, I entertained those thoughts until the moment I saw you. You lived in the same city my plane landed in and decided to meet me for when I returned to Korea. I cursed myself for not thinking that you’re more handsome in person and that I had ‘won a lottery’, but I was fully aware it was really you. Same level of handsome, same person I met online three weeks prior and exactly the same person in all my dreams. Maybe if I were to fall in love with you, it would simply be my taste to like those that appeared as everybody else in the world, but here we are, I still don’t have that information.

I drove out to come see you from time to time. The awkward atmosphere of our first meeting was made up by our third date and my first sleepover at your place. That was the night you let it all out and revealed to me that you enjoyed skinship as much as I did. It was a very memorable night, for it was the night I first thought that ‘we’ were ‘us’. What I would do to live that night again, or for the rest of my entire life, is something you could not imagine, Hyukjae.

We had been together about five months in terms of reality when you asked me, ‘why don’t we just move in together?’, which I thought was a great question. For the first time, you toured my place with your own senses rather than a video call and we both agreed your place would be much better. You went to work with me and waited as I spoke to my boss on getting transferred to a location in your city and hugged me when I told you I was good to go. You were with me in saying goodbye to my favourite places and left me alone to do the rest, but it was fine. You had to get back to your own job so I had my brother help me load a UHaul, drive my car with me and all. I was only taking my books and bookshelf with me, the books I wanted to share with you were wrapped in a bow together and within a tied up bag on my passenger seat. They were the odd books in my collection, but the kind I wished to read to or with a lover someday, and you were considered my lover at the time. When I left my city, the sun in the sky became hidden underneath some dark, gray clouds. And when I finally passed the green welcome-sign, my un-rolled window paid me in a droplet of rain. It was the first time that boring, miserable, gray clouds spoke to me in a way that said something other than dismal; it was the first time I genuinely thought that nature’s most mundane formation meant there was a fresh start heading my way.

  
  


To say you ‘feel it in your bones’ is a feeling I never got with you about anything. I cursed myself wishing it would, but the simple trick to keeping myself within the illusion that we could work out for the long-run was reminding myself that you can’t physically feel anything in your bones, that nobody is 100% sure of anything that they do and that nobody was going to be aware of what would happen before the minute they fell in love. My quest for love, my quest for experiencing love and writing about it fantastically for a chance to make a name for myself in the writing world was something I now think I ‘felt in my bones’ was never going to happen here. The constant denying of that feeling did not help at all. Your touches and kisses were all things I greatly enjoyed, but they did not make up for what I felt in my bones. There was even the time I noticed that you felt the same way as I. I was sad, but my heart wasn’t ‘broken’. However, I began to feel that perhaps your heart was ‘broken’ during our entire relationship thus far. I became dedicated to ‘fixing’ your heart and in the end, the bandage was what ‘broke’ mine.

  
  


My boss’ name was Lee Sungmin. You know this name well, and I don’t blame you. Sungmin looked like a plush doll, but he could also appear sexy and intimidating, but at the end of the day, he was just my boss. There was a very distinct thing about him, though. He always carried bandaids in his pockets and always wore one over the side of his wrist. My co-workers thought he had a self-harm issue, but that wasn’t a good enough excuse for my curious mind. I asked older co-workers and learned that Sungmin had never taken the bandaid off at work, but the bandaid was not always there. One of these older co-workers introduced me to his homophobic theory by saying that it was how gays identified each other and that Sungmin just ‘choose to be gay’ one day. I couldn’t help but laugh at his ignorance so I asked for his evidence, but he seemed so serious when he said it was because one day he saw Sungmin kissing a man after work. It didn’t explain the bandaid to me, but that was the day before I made the bright decision of coming out to my boss to let him know of the rumours that were around his workplace. 

Sungmin was seen as an unfriendly boss, but he and I managed to become friends. Sad, but he was the first proper friend I had had in years. You didn’t like him, though. You said you were happy for me, but you did not show it. Sungmin and I went out and played games together and you were always invited to join, but you never wanted to go. When I vented to Sungmin about it, he said it was because you two had a negative history. When I asked Sungmin about the bandaids that he still wore around me, he said it was a bad tattoo he ‘can’t’ cover yet. And when you admitted that Sungmin and you had a negative history, it all clicked. Of course, you two never said you dated, just that you resent each other for reasons you were never up to talk about, and I respected it for so long. Fortunately, Sungmin didn’t mind that I was dating you, he let me talk about my life with you. There was a brief moment I was so caught up in anger that I thought I could leave you for him, but I again slipped back into thinking about ‘how far we’d made it’ in our relationship and told myself there was nothing to turn back for now.

_Did you know how badly I wanted to love you…?_

  
  


Much later, after that drama had all settled, we were blessed with one fateful month of successful and happy dates, great sex and general quaility time, allowing us to start one of the books I mentioned previously. Your friend commented that we sounded like we were a married couple. At first, we laughed it off until I came up with the sentence I felt I was possessed in saying, ‘Hyukjae, I love you’. You kept laughing until the words of the evil phantom processed in your head and you asked me, ‘so, you want to marry me?’

And the rest was like,

“I mean, if you want to get married.”

You took your arm off my shoulder and took my hands into yours, you looked straight into my eyes and asked the question again, only phrased differently. You asked: “Will you marry me?”

I could feel myself heating up, guilt forming in my stomach. There were many things I wanted to say, my mind was rolling 5 dice trying to decide which words would come out of my mouth next. It seemed the winning roll was a ‘yes’, but not by my own choice. You were serious, your eyes spoke words that no language I knew had the words for. I felt ashamed you looked at me this way, because I knew I had never given as much to you as you to me. I didn’t deserve an ounce of your affection, I wish I had said no. 

  
  


Because we couldn’t get married legally, we planned a fake wedding to take place in what was previously considered ‘our’ living room. When we finally got around to decorating our house, we had already planned to be married the next day. You had many more friends than I did, so you were the one writing down the names on a notepad. Eventually, after writing out the name of what looked to be everyone you knew, you told me you were narrowing it down to four people. I had met your friends before and I quite liked them, but I wasn’t as close to any like I was Sungmin, so I really hoped you would put his name down. When you got up to use the bathroom, I couldn’t help the urge to run over and look at the list. There were four names remaining on the paper and Sungmin’s was one of them. That was the time I felt loved. You put aside your petty bullshit for me. That was the time I said _‘grazie’,_ thinking you would somehow know I said it and that I said it to you. 

But that moment quickly went south. After I had finished decorating the bedroom, you refused to look at it, saying it was ‘reserved for after the ‘ceremony’’. I respected your decision and then changed the topic to thanking you for inviting my friend. I told you about how I wanted you two to get over your past and be mature about things but you said you wouldn’t be speaking to him at all. Taking advantage of the fact that nobody was contacted yet, I decided to turn the lights out and go to sleep. You stood in place and watched as I tuned each one off, but when I tried to enter the bedroom, you insisted it was for ‘the married couple’. I was annoyed, but I couldn’t hold it. I still didn’t say anything to you as I grabbed a blanket and laid it on the living room floor, moving the pillows from the bed next to each other above the blanket and covered myself up in it. You took your shirt off and joined, gradually taking more and more of the blanket to yourself. I ended up cold because of it, I kept waking up what felt like every 15 minutes until the last time I did, when I noticed you were unconsciously wrapping your arms around me. In all this time, I forgot that on our third date you admitted to not being able to sleep without hugging a pillow. I found this really adorable. I remember thinking there was nobody else in the world this cute, thinking I became that pillow to hug until I drifted off into sleep.

The next morning, I woke up early and got ready for work. By the time I was at the door, you were awake and sleepily called after me with ‘honey’. Just enough light was getting through the curtains to allow me to see your eyes half-open and messy bedhead. It’s a weird thing to remember so well, but you looked like you were in a painting. I wanted to dive into this blue painting, to take off my work clothes and lay with you. If I ever found men this attractive before, I would actively try to get into relationships more often. I wanted a closer look at you, I wanted to run my fingers through your hair, I wanted to touch your chest and wake you with all the little kisses I could offer, but alas, I held back. ‘If we were married yesterday, would you have still gone to work?’ you said, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything so I shook my head to say ‘no’ and left, locking the door behind me as I went. _If only you knew how badly I wanted to be with you then_. But looking back, I don’t think much would have changed if I did. My plan for after the ‘ceremony’ was to just get Sungmin’s excuse. I couldn’t tell you that at the moment because you took my breath away.

  
  


My infatuation with you grew stronger when we were standing nose to nose in front of our four friends, but Sungmin, my boss and friend could be seen staring at you from the corner of my eye. I couldn’t tell his expression, but I tried to keep my focus on you the best I could. Our foreheads were touching like this because we were too shy to kiss in front of our friends, but Jeongsu, our non-professional actor friend playing the part of the priest threatened us by putting his hands on the back of each of our heads. I figure that if we were this awkward, then real, proper weddings must be a lot more embarrassing, but it was a relief. Our sweaty palms unlinked, the strange feeling of the new rings on our fingers was forgotten and we shared a forced, but passionate kiss that I can’t help but admit to kind of enjoying. They cheered for us. As fake or as illegal as it might have been, that fake wedding would probably be the realest one I would ever be a groom for in my entire life.

Much later that night, everyone was hanging out on the balcony except for Sungmin, who was sitting alone on the couch, staring into his phone more than using it and holding up a glass of untouched champagne. I asked him what was wrong and he told me everything about the history between you two, saying it made him so emotional to see you finally ‘find someone’. Instead of showing him how furious I was that you two had to have somehow agreed this wouldn’t be revealed to me, I asked him if that was his first glass of champagne. It wasn’t. He asked me to call a cab for him to go home in. I did.

So, Hyukjae, let’s repeat. Before I moved out here, you took note of my work, contacted Sungmin and asked him not to say anything to me about your past relationship? You two were ‘so bad for each other’ but couldn’t keep it in the past? You’d been flirting with each other as recently as four months prior to this ‘ceremony’ and Sungmin just couldn’t ‘get over it’. My dreams were not coming true in this relationship, I already knew that, but at this time I was so deep in my own fantasy world I put it aside as ‘Hyukjae is faithful, I trust my husband’, but I bet Sungmin felt the same way, and that’s why he couldn’t escape you. I know it’s strange to flatter you now, but I don’t think you’re some irredeemable villain. I think your priorities are fucked and you’ve never found a person who wouldn’t stare into the sun for you. You’re capable of things you shouldn’t be, you made a writer incapable of understanding metaphors just so he could believe you never broke his heart in one way or another. There’s something about you that simultaneously pisses me off and makes me hope you find the best for you someday. The fact Sungmin thought I was the best for you because I could criticise you were my least favourite words to ever hear.

I ranted to you about this after a shower when everybody left and instead of listening you complimented what I did with the room. I was still fragile, I hadn’t allowed myself to believe you didn’t love me even though I knew I didn’t love you. I thanked you for your compliments and somehow we ended up having sex. It was different, though. You usually would hold my hand and you didn’t even reach for it. You put me in a position I told you I was uncomfortable with previously and apologised after I reminded you I was uncomfortable. When we finished I couldn’t help but let the tears flow down. I had finally considered that you didn’t love me. When I went back into the shower, you followed behind me as you usually did. This time, you were timid. You joined me only when I said you could and you told me that you were sorry once again. I didn’t know what you were sorry for, but I didn’t want to push for a more formal apology by asking. I knew the end was near. You forgot who I was the minute I mentioned your past, serious, relationship with him. 

Two days later, you were supposedly at work and I was out shopping. Suddenly, it was like your work days got longer and a poor, delusional me, was back in the clouds. I was out buying my fake husband a real gift when I saw you two together. Holding hands. Bandaid off. Ring removed.

Today, I find out that the tattoo underneath it says ‘Hyukjae’. You must truly be one hell of a drug.

  
  


Whenever you decide to go through, or even open this laptop again, Lee Hyukjae, whether you see this or not, this is what I’ve been using you for. ‘Love’. I don’t think any of this was really ‘love’, but I’m glad it’s over. This was the most adventurous chapter of my mundane life by far. If I never find ‘love’ again, so be it. My novels can have different directions.

_Grazie_ ,

Lee Donghae


End file.
